Review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) by Jonnyfendi — 20 Jan 2011

The Novelist, Stieg Larsson died in 2004, where none of his MILLENNIUM trilogy has been published yet. There was a tragic story that I found behind the making of those books. When Larsson was 15 years old, he witnessed the gang rape of a young girl.

He never forgave himself for failing to help that poor girl at that time. The girl name was Lisbeth. Thiz movie is the first adaptation of those trilogy books. Sometimes, I found myself enjoying so much pleasure by watching European movies like thiz Scandinavian movie.

The movie fills with splendid Cinematoraphy. I had ever thought that High Definition (HD) Camera would not be able to accomplishing thiz kind of remarkable views. I was wrong, many nowadays Director are still able to create a great nuance with precise treatment through their HD Cameras, sometimes even better.

The movie directed by Niels Arden Oplev. The story tells about the troubled journalist Mikael Blomkvist has to work side by side with a genius punk-goth Hacker, Lisbeth Salander in order to solve a mystery about a missing young girl named Harriet, for the event that had been occurred 40 years ago, as the demand of a billionaire industrialist, Henrik Vanger.

I have to mention that Sven-Bertil Taube has made a solid performance as Henrik Vanger. Michael Niqvist is very convincing to create his dual-side character as Mikael Blomkvist. And surely, the most memorable performance is belongs to Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander.

I realize that those characters are so difficult to play (especially the two main characters, Blomkvist and Salander) bcoz of their complicated backgrounds. I simply called thiz movie as: Classic thriller with Modern contents.

Classic which is making us pay attention to clue by clue to get closer to the hidden villain. It is what Classic thrillers do. Modern which is flooding with audacious elements, such as: The anti-hero characters, ironical sexual abuse scene, unusual moral conflict and many more.

I heard that next year, they are remaking thiz movie into Hollywood version. My opinion is: do not expect too much, although The Director will be David Fincher, who is capable to translate dark tone into intriguing crime thrillers like thiz, he has already proved that through SE7EN (1995), FIGHT CLUB (1999), and THE ZODIAC (2005).

The newest James Bond, Daniel Craig will be cast as Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara (THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010)) will be playing as Lisbeth. I think no matter how hard they will try. Thiz Swedish movie has already set up the bar so high and seems undefeated at thiz time.